avocado8

The Birds! The Birds!

The starlings were mocking me. I understand that now. I spent the morning on the back deck, transplanting the orange pepper seedlings and repotting two yellow pepper plants in more container-friendly soil (I carefully took the plants out of their containers, mixed some seed starter and coir-based potting mix into the topsoil/manure & hummus blend that was already in there, and then replaced the plants), and the starlings shouted at me from the former sparrows' nest they'd taken over the whole time I was out there.

Little did I know that they were just waiting for me to leave so they could undo all my work. Sometime this afternoon, they attacked both orange peppers and the smaller of the two yellow peppers—AND the Baxter's Early Bush Cherry tomato. The peppers are GONE. The tomato might be salvagable; I'm not sure yet. The watermelon that was attacked a few days ago seems to be clinging valiantly to life, so I suppose the tomato could do the same.

I took the time tonight to make a chicken wire cloche for the Sprite grape tomato just in case, and I'm glad I found a water bottle that would work for the Elfin grape this morning. I'm going to have to think of a solution for the already-fragile Mexican Gherkin soon too, or it will likely be the starlings' next target.